one question i keep coming up against is the president and john boehner are now supposedly having good, substantive discussions. can boehner bring the troops along? if he agrees with the president, can he get enough tea party republicans behind him to sale the deal? because that wasn't the case back in 2011. and, tony, i have to say, both sides seem to have really -- with all the rhetoric we've had leading up to today, it seems to me that both sides have rallied up their bases and i have questions about whether either of them can deliver. >> yeah. i think it makes it really difficult. jared is right, you know, you talk about each element of what an agreement might be. some of them are really big water fall kinds of issues, right? and the rate issue is a water fall kind of issue. you don't meet in the middle. you have to go over and everybody go off the water fall together. >> wait a second. is there a proposal that could be met which would say we're going to raise income tax rates, but we're not going to go back to 39.6%? maybe 37%. >> it is possible, but still it is movement on margin